Why go
Numbers are often the first part of an inscription a visitor can begin to understand. At Tulum's Temple of the Initial Series, a dated inscription connects a building with the wider practice of recording time. Knowing what a dot or bar means gives that detail a clearer role.
The full story
Maya numerals use a dot for one and a bar for five. These marks combine to make values from one to nineteen. A zero sign fills an empty position; in later examples it can take the form of a shell. Unlike the base-ten system common today, ordinary Maya place values rise by twenties. A mark on a higher level therefore changes value according to its position, allowing compact notation for very large numbers. This system served counting and calendrical records. Zero was especially useful when a date needed to show that one unit of a count was absent. The calendar's Long Count uses place notation to express spans of days, with a modified position that gives a 360-day unit. That is why a row of numerals in a date needs to be read as a sequence, not as isolated decorative marks. At a site, begin by looking for repeated dots and horizontal bars near glyph blocks. The arithmetic is simple enough to try, while a full reading of the surrounding text still depends on specialist knowledge of the script.